Photo/Illutration Shigeru Omi, chairman of the government panel of COVID-19 experts, responds to a question in the Diet. (Koichi Ueda)

The government is on track to lift pre-emergency COVID-19 measures after getting the green light to do so under weaker conditions from a panel of health experts handling the public health crisis.

Curbs now in place until March 21 across 18 prefectures, including Tokyo, will be lifted as scheduled with a decision to be made as early as March 16, according to sources.

A panel meeting on March 11 agreed to relax conditions under which the government can lift the pre-emergency steps.

Until now, a prefecture had to demonstrate that new COVID-19 cases were falling and hospital beds were freeing up. The guideline for the medical care system was that the hospital bed usage ratio remains under 50 percent for COVID-19 patients and those with serious symptoms.

But the panel almost unanimously approved a new guideline that will allow for the lifting of the curbs as long as one of the conditions is met.

After the panel meeting, Shigeru Omi, the chairman, held a news conference and said that almost all the members agreed to the relaxed conditions.

Some panel members went so far as to say the trend in new COVID-19 cases should be ignored altogether in deciding to lift the curbs.

The experts also OK’d a change in attendance levels at large events to eliminate limits on entry as long as event organizers have appropriate safety standards in place.

One panel member noted that the government is keen to lift the curbs for all the prefectures as scheduled, adding that no factors had emerged to suggest this was an inappropriate strategy.

“It will depend on the situation in each prefecture,” one member said. “In the end, it will depend on what each prefectural governor wants.”

Satoshi Hori, a professor of infection control science at Juntendo University in Tokyo, called for new measures in place of curbs that cover large parts of a prefecture.

“Preparations should begin for new pinpoint infection-prevention measures that are more focused on smaller areas but more effective,” Hori said.

(This article was compiled from reports by Kohei Morioka, Kai Ichino and Yuki Edamatsu.)

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